


Back (and forward) ceaselessly

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 19:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18483040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: In her college years, Jordan accidentally becomes an uncontrollable time traveler. Over the next few years she sees ancient Greece, wasted cities of the future, and Daisy Buchanan.Mostly a lot of Daisy Buchanan.





	Back (and forward) ceaselessly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [armsofthestorm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/armsofthestorm/gifts).



 

Jordan first meets Daisy at school. They’re both in their late teens, and Daisy is the coolest drink of water Jordan has ever seen, not to mention one of the most high-class girls at a high-class institute, and for some reason she knows Jordan’s name, and for some reason she keeps on asking Jordan to hang out.

Jordan isn’t sure what to think of this.

Most people who know her before she’s introduced herself know her by reputation, and her reputation is varied. The Baker family is decent, but Jordan isn’t. Ever since she took that one friendship a little too far the other year… well, all girls have their passionate friendships, but most know the limits. Jordan supposes maybe Daisy knows about her because of the rumors, but Daisy never brings those rumors up, and she asks Jordan to do things with her little clique: walks in the park, parties with plenty of boys, games of tennis or golf. Daisy almost makes Jordan decent by proximity; almost.

Daisy doesn’t tend to make fun of Jordan too harshly, though she does have her fun. She doesn’t even make fun of Jordan when she hears that Jordan has been chosen as the assistant of a particular professor, a professor notorious for his insane ideas who is currently working on creating a time machine.

“Are you sure it’s a time machine?” she asks Jordan gravely.

“It’s something to do with time,” Jordan says. They’re slumped under a pear tree, Daisy’s head on Jordan’s shoulder, each as languid as the other. “All right, maybe it wasn’t a machine. I think he said it was more like an elixir. Which makes even less sense. “

“That sounds about right.”

“What, have you heard much about it?”

Daisy laughs that high tinkling laugh of hers, but it comes out fake. It’s always a little fake, but this time more than the usual—she’s hiding something, but what? “Well, people do talk about him. …are you sure you want to work on this project? It seems kind of like a drag.”

“It sounds hysterical. I want to see what happens.”

“Yes, but think of all the hours you’ll have to put in.”

“Not much else to do with my time, is there? Other than walking out with boys, and I’ll always be able to make time for that.”

She eyes Daisy, not sure of what she wants her to say. She’s learned by now not to cling too tightly to any of the girls that interest her; it isn’t wise. And it especially wouldn’t be wise to start clinging onto Daisy. Daisy plays games. She likes leading boys on with no commitment before jilting them weeks or months later, she likes getting girls to follow her around in a posse and playing them all against each other. Jordan isn’t interested in games like that—she’s more of a golf girl. She doesn’t mind a challenge but she knows better than to take a game seriously when the opponent is just playing around.

So she knows better than to want Daisy to say, “ _You should be spending all that time with me_.”

Daisy laughs again. “Well, I guess it’s up to you. Me, I would be bored out of my mind.”

So she starts working with the professor, but she still has plenty of time for Daisy, even if Daisy more claims it than asks for it. They have fun together. Daisy has a string of beaux, but she doesn’t seem interested in any of them—except one maybe, an officer named Jay Gatsby. When he’s around Daisy, Jordan heads elsewhere. Daisy’s no good around him. She turns to mush.

The project on time traveling elixir is a series of failures. The professor tries one brew after another, testing them all on rats. The rats don’t start time traveling. They don’t even die or go insane. They just get drunk for a couple hours, about the same as if the professor was feeding them some hard whiskey.

Jordan takes lots of notes for the professor on the results, and lots of mental notes so she can tell the latest anecdotes to her friends every week. Everyone laughs at the stories. Daisy laughs at the stories, too, but she seems a little nervous. Jordan can’t imagine what she finds exceptionable about mundane stories of rats getting drunk. The girl needs to loosen up a bit.

So one evening she sneaks Daisy into the laboratory while everyone else is out. She shows Daisy all there is to see—the tubes, the flasks, the chemicals. She shows Daisy their most recent elixir. She shows Daisy the rats.

“No effect at all. You’d expect at least something would come of it.” Jordan shook her head. “I think the professor really wanted to start a brewery but knew he couldn’t get the school to fund it. Time travel, though.”

Daisy seems anxious. Jordan wants her to loosen up. She uncorks the flask of the most recent elixir and lifts it up. “Well, cheerio.”

Daisy’s eyes widen. “Jordan—wait—”

But in a moment, Jordan has taken a large swig from the flask. Daisy is distressed—she’s running forward, grabbing at the flask—and as the flask flies out of Jordan’s hands, the room seems to shake around her.

She’s gone before she can hear the shattering of the glass.

* * *

Daisy first meets Jordan in her own back yard. She is a little girl, a pretty little girl, age undetermined—her memories of this time of her life, all frilly dresses and chasing after kittens and making bouquets and gossiping about her friends, all tend to run together. Jordan appears in the back yard in an eye’s blink, one moment not there and the next, well, there. She is a middle-aged woman in a party dress that won’t be fashionable for a couple of decades, and her side is bleeding.

She is gasping for air.

Daisy doesn’t know who the woman is or how she got there, only that she’s strange and pretty and in trouble. There is a part of her not yet committed to the role of the princess in the tower, a part that still wants to rescue, and not be, a damsel in distress. “Mama!” she calls. “Come quick!” and she runs to Jordan’s side and helps her to sit down on the grass.

“Daisy,” Jordan mutters. “Daisy I’m sorry.” (Of course Daisy doesn’t know she’s Jordan at this point, not yet.)

“Let me help you.”

“Daisy.”

“Do I know you?”

“I’m sorry,” Jordan repeats helplessly, and then she vanishes.

There is just a little blood left on the grass. Daisy’s mother thinks she has been making up stories, but she looks at the red stain with concern. Something’s going on, something bad. But it can’t be a magically appearing and disappearing woman. Such things don’t happen, especially not in respectable society.

* * *

The second time Daisy meets Jordan there is more explanation. This Jordan looks a little younger—though to be fair, Daisy doesn’t really remember how Jordan looked last time in any great detail, panic having swallowed it all up—and she doesn’t remember ever having bled on Daisy’s yard, but she does know Daisy. She appears the same way as before, but this time it’s in Daisy’s room, which is good. No one ever believed Daisy about Jordan, so she spitefully decides she’ll keep Jordan a secret.

“I’m a time traveler,” she says.

“Like in H.G. Wells.”

“Not exactly. Wells’ protagonist uses a time machine; I don’t need one. My body naturally travels to other times, sometimes to other places. I can’t always control when or where it goes, either. Often I go to places where people I know are, to important events. But sometimes the places I go are very different. I’ve seen places where aeroplanes are so common everyone has been on one at least once. I’ve seen plains of grass in a time where humans don’t exist—but I won’t go into it,” she says quickly. “I’m sure it would bore you.”

“How could it bore me? You must tell me.”

“I forgot,” Jordan mutters. “Even as a child, you’re incorrigible.”

Daisy remembers, then, that she’s not supposed to be curious. Mother says she asks too many questions; Mother says she talks too much entirely. But, she thinks, a time traveler cannot be a very proper person, so maybe it is all right to be improper in one’s presence.

She begs very prettily, and Jordan relents with a few stories of travels to Europe and South America, the sights she has seen in these far-off lands. She won’t tell Daisy anything about her own life, though, or even how the two of them are bound to meet. For Daisy has already figured out that much. She must be someone important to Jordan, if Jordan has come here twice already.

“Maybe I’m your mother,” she says. But at Jordan’s expression she bursts out laughing. “I’m just teasing you! Of course you look nothing like me. Tell me, we’re dear friends, aren’t we? We can’t be anything else. I feel already like I’ve known you my whole life.”

Jordan’s lips press together. She says, “We are friends.”

“Best friends?”

Jordan relents again. “We are very good friends, and I like you very much. You are a horrible darling, you know.”

“Oh, am I? Even in the future?”

“You only get worse.”

But on concrete details, she is mum. She won’t even say how she became a time traveler, though she lets it slip that she was not always this way.

It is not the last time she comes to visit Daisy. In fact, after this time, visits become somewhat common. Her age varies. Sometimes she seems to be just a girl at school. Sometimes she is quite middle aged. She’s never ancient, though, and she’s never as young as Daisy.

Daisy is worried, actually, because she’s pretty sure Jordan’s never been older than she was the first time they met. Of course, that Jordan was doubtless from a far-off future—far enough off that Daisy has no reason to worry yet. But Jordan was hurt.

It would be sad to think she’s already seen Jordan for the last time, and just doesn’t know it yet.

When she finally meets the Jordan of her own timeline, it’s a little surprising. Jordan is so damn young. Though she’d wondered if it were possible they’d be the same age, she’s never really pictured Jordan in her teens, and it’s… odd. This Jordan isn’t a time traveler either—as far as she can tell—and Daisy is careful not to reveal that she already knows her. She thinks it’s what the older Jordan would want.

When she hears Jordan is getting involved in time travel experiments, she knows this must be it. She wonders if she should stop it from happening. Although Jordan’s told her many exciting stories of time traveling, it’s always been clear that it wears on her, too. She can’t control her travels very well. And Daisy can’t help but wonder if the time traveling is what will eventually get her hurt.

But she doesn’t stop Jordan. She’s not even sure how she would go about it—Jordan’s always seemed to her like an unstoppable force. She just watches from a distance, and then ends up watching up close as Jordan vanishes, leaving nothing but glass shards and spilled elixir on the floor behind her.

Daisy waits for her to reappear. When nothing happens, she runs away, legs shaking. She thinks to herself, _maybe no one will know I was here_.

Of course Jordan will always know.

This is one of the things that will bind them together, though Daisy doesn’t see it yet. She likes Jordan of the present very much, they’re good friends, but she doesn’t see yet what she means to Jordan. Not exactly.

* * *

Jordan’s first trip is a bad one.

She soars straight into a world uninhabited by mankind. There are buildings here, but they are wrecked and overgrown with weeds and trees. The air is roiling hot. Later she’ll map out her travels with a professor and they won’t be able to decide where she went: A terrible future, a terrible past, even a terrible present for a lost civilization. The wrecks are nondescript and Jordan is panicked. “Hello! _Hello_?”

In less than a minute she’s traveling again. Her pendulum swings at a manic pace. She’s walking down a cobble-stoned street in a city, Victorian dresses clouding around her. Women stare at her as if she, in what she considers to be a perfectly modest school uniform, is the one out of place, which she is. Then in a blink she’s in the middle of an ocean. She’s flailing, drowning. And then she’s out again, and she’s sitting in the parlor of a nice house, dripping salt water on a sofa cushion.

From a room away she can hear an argument. One of the voices is Daisy’s, the other is a man she doesn’t know. Yelling. She gets up. She should go in. She should ask where, when, the _fuck_ , she is. She should stop the argument, which is heading to the point of violence. She should…

She slips over to the foyer, quiet quiet, and then outside. There is a chill in the air. It’s autumn.

She walks and walks until she finds her way to a bay. On the other side of the water she can see a house lit up with a thousand golden lights. Close, yet far away. _What place is this_ , she wonders. _What is Daisy doing here? What am I doing here?_

Later in her life, earlier in the timeline, she will know Tom Buchanan as soon as she meets him, just by his voice. She’ll tell Daisy to stay away, and Daisy won’t listen.

* * *

Jordan doesn’t know how long she flounders in the time stream, trying to find her way back home. She grabs food here and there, barely gets any sleep. Maybe it’s a week that passes before she even gets close. She lands three months after her “disappearance” and decides that’s probably as close as she’ll get.

She immediately runs to the professor she was working with. He gives her something that he says will help to stabilize her, then a heavy scolding for messing with forces beyond her understanding. Her parents believe she’s dead, he tells her. She calls long-distance and tells them she’s not, and listens to a lot of crying and scolding.

She’s exhausted when she gets back to the dorm. Daisy is waiting for her outside.

“I heard you were back.”

She looks a little worried, a little happy. Not nearly as shocked as anyone else. She offers Jordan a hug, and Jordan accepts.

“Well,” she says, when they’ve pulled away, and they’re heading inside to Daisy’s room, “did I scare you?”

“A little. Don’t tell the professor I was with you, I never said a word.”

“That’s cold.”

“Come on, darling. I knew you’d be back.”

“Did you?”

Daisy bites her lip. “Maybe I should tell you… we’ve met before.”

The story comes out. Vague, minus details—Daisy says future Jordan always abides by the rule of “less said the better.” Present Jordan is pissed.

“So I’m just going to keep on wandering through time for the rest of my life? And you thought it would be better _not_ to warn me about this?”

“I didn’t think I should change anything.”

“Maybe some things could use changing.”

“You always told me it was better not to change anything.”

“Well.” Jordan isn’t sure what to say to that. She’s furious at her future self, and she’s furious at Daisy, and she’s tired, so damn tired, after the week she’s had. And three months of her life gone forever. She stalks inside. They’re going to Daisy’s room because Jordan’s has been filled by a new student, so she’s not really leaving Daisy behind.

She forgives Daisy eventually. It’s too hard not to; Daisy can be pitiful when she tries. And she still likes Daisy. Everyone at school thinks Jordan’s a freak now, but Daisy still includes her in whatever she does, even if she does sometimes tease. Daisy still isn’t ashamed to sit with her under a pear tree.

Daisy is the ninth marvel of Jordan’s world. (The eighth, Jordan long ago decided, is Jordan herself.) That means something these days, too, because she still can’t totally control the time traveling and sometimes finds herself stranded in the strangest places. Some of them are lovely. But even when she gets stranded in ancient Greece for a whole month, flirting with Sappho and trying her best to make do with her terrible Greek, she mostly just thinks about how to get back to Daisy and whether she’ll be able to bring back some olives. In the end the trip back catches her unawares, and she has nothing but her tunic. She gives it to Daisy regardless. To Daisy it’s been only a day since she last left, but she takes it with a tinkling laugh and a thank you.

They graduate. But they still both live in the same city, and they still hang with the same crowds. Jordan knows this place, this time, this person is her home.

* * *

She almost goes to Daisy’s wedding.

She’s three years ahead of time; it will be three years before Daisy is wed, for her. But here she is, and it is the night before Daisy’s wedding. Daisy is crying in the bathroom, but she manages to get out the words to tell Jordan as much.

There are pearls scattered on the floor. Daisy is clutching a letter.

“It’s from Gatsby,” she tells Jordan. “Jay Gatsby.”

A spike of annoyance. “That soldier? He’s old news. You’re worrying about him on the night before your wedding?”

“Jordan,” she says, clutching Jordan’s sleeve, “Jordan, go down and tell ’em Daisy’s changed her mind. Tell ’em Daisy can’t go through with it after all.”

She’s drunk, Jordan realizes. She’s seen Daisy drunk before but it isn’t usually this ugly.

“How am I supposed to tell them that? I’m not even from this timeline. Darling, it’s none of my affair.”

Daisy laughs bitterly. “ _Et tu, Brute_? I thought you were from earlier. I thought you still loved me.”

“What?”

“Fuck it.”

She grabs Jordan by the back of the neck—she’s shorter but she manages it—and hauls her down for a kiss. Jordan kisses her back, of course. How could she do otherwise?

They fuck against the wall, Jordan’s fingers in Daisy’s cunt, quiet so no one downstairs will hear. Daisy is used to this, it seems. She’s used to the quiet, though she bites her lip to stop sound from escaping, and Jordan keeps on worrying she’ll bite too hard and make it bleed. And she’s used to the motions of fucking, and when Jordan’s done with her she drops to her knees and pulls Jordan’s skirt up, and she clearly knows what she’s doing there too, how to move her lips and tongue, where to find the clit. Jordan gasps. She has a harder time staying quiet than Daisy did.

“Do we… do this?” she asks when they’re done.

Daisy laughs. “I’m not supposed to tell you, right?” She stares at the ceiling. “Fuck you, Jordan.”

There is no version of Jordan Baker who attends Daisy’s wedding the day after. Daisy finds the guts to go through with it alone.

But the Jordan who leaves Daisy’s bathroom finds her way back to the Daisy of her own present and once there finds the daring to kiss Daisy for the first time. That is the beginning of a golden age, but golden ages do not last. Daisy doesn’t see why she can’t have both Jordan and Tom, but even though Jordan’s always been willing to share Daisy with her other amours, she doesn’t like the thought of Daisy getting married. They break, and Jordan leaves the state. She receives an invitation to Daisy’s wedding, and on the night before, she masturbates, thinking that somewhere out there Daisy is having a hell of a time.

* * *

Jordan herself can’t get married. She can’t. What kind of man would marry a woman who wanders through time, who can’t be depended on? And what kind of man would Jordan even want to marry, anyhow?

She does like men, sometimes. For a brief affair, a good fuck. But not the way Daisy likes Tom. Certainly not the way Daisy used to like Gatsby, or the way she herself likes Daisy.

“Am I supposed to just be with you, and that’s it?” Daisy asks her, days before they break it off.

“I’m not asking for that. It sounds terribly boring. Just not Tom. He’s no good.”

“You are asking for that.” Daisy is bitter. “But sooner or later you’ll leave me, and then I’ll be alone. I can’t just be with you, Jordan. It doesn’t work like that.”

( _This is the closest Daisy ever comes to telling Jordan she thinks she may have seen Jordan about to die. But she never dares tell her_.)

* * *

When Jordan is done with Daisy, she’s done. So she tells herself. For female companionship, she goes to the speakeasies that have sprung up all over New York since the beginning of Prohibition. No one at any of them is quite like Daisy, but that’s probably for the best. Daisy is a doozy. Daisy is a heartbreaker, and Jordan is looking for salve.

She wants to be done with Daisy but her own fucked up time traveling body disagrees with her. No more does it allow her to travel to Greece or Rome or Paraguay or the Caribbean. Now, she haunts the town of Daisy’s childhood. She is the woman Daisy knew as a girl, and she wants to hate young Daisy every time she sees her, but can’t help but love her. Who could help but love Daisy?

“We’ll be the best of friends, won’t we?” Daisy asks her, innocently curious. “Don’t lie, Jordan. I can tell. You’re as fond as anything of me. And this is the tenth time you’ve come here.”

“We’ll be the best of friends,” Jordan allows. For a while.

She and the young Daisy play games with each other. Party games, Daisy dragging Jordan off to play with her fellows, the only grown woman in a crowd of pre-teens. Card games in Daisy’s room or her back yard. Sometimes, if she shoots far enough back, Daisy wants to play with dolls.

“You can be the daddy, and I’ll be the mommy.”

“I don’t think I’d be a good daddy, dear.”

“Why not?” Daisy cocks her head. “Oh, are you a mommy? In the future?”

“No. I’m not very good with children. Not that type.”

Daisy flaps a hand placidly. “You’re pretty, and you’re nice, so you’d probably be fine at it.”

_You’re pretty and you’re nice too_ , Jordan would like to say, _and you don’t seem to be having such a good time with your daughter where I’m from. Not that you don’t think she’s adorable, but playing mommy all the time has become such a bore. But you’re young, and you don’t know about all that. Children like to play games of being grown up, and grown-ups all want to play at being young again. My Daisy would love to go back to being you_.

Yet even when Jordan is bitter (and she’s bitter too much of the time), she loves Daisy. Young Daisy, older Daisy. Every Daisy she has known is her beloved, and every Daisy she has not known, every moment she will never get to experience, she craves with every ounce of her being. And her body knows it. She doesn’t just end up visiting Daisy as a kid. She lands in Paris, in Santa Barbara, in Chicago, seeing splinters of Daisy’s life with Tom. In real life, she doesn’t keep track of where exactly Daisy is. But her internal compass spins towards its eternal north.

Daisy always acts surprised and pleased to see her. “Jordan! What are you doing here?”

“Just temporarily stranded. You know how it is.”

And Tom invites her in, and she’ll stay as long as it takes for her body to decide to leave. She still isn’t good at time traveling on purpose. She thinks the measures the professor took to stabilize her weren’t strong enough; she visits him and he tells her they’ll have to do more studies. But it seems she can never stay still long enough for the research.

Then Daisy and Tom are back in New York, and Daisy calls Jordan up. Apparently they’re friends again.

Coincidentally, Jordan’s body cools off. She stops traveling so frequently, and when she does, it’s no longer to scattered moments of Daisy’s past. Things calm down.

It’s probably not a coincidence but Jordan pretends it is.

* * *

Daisy’s decided they’re friends again. Lovers again too.

Jordan has given up on pretending she wants anything else.

* * *

It’s an ugly summer. For Jordan, anyway. She’s finally gone to see the house with all the lights, Gatsby’s house, and it has some killer parties but it’s also brought her a lot of misery. It’s the same Gatsby Daisy used to be in love with, and before long the two are back in touch. In touch in a physical sense.

Jordan has a boy of her own this summer—pretty thing named Nick Carraway—but even though the guy’s good company and doesn’t mind that she’s a player or that she’s a time traveler who sometimes disappears in the middle of a date, he’s no compensation for Daisy’s absence. All of Daisy’s love has been directed at Gatsby, now. Seems she has no time for Jordan.

“I don’t know why I bother,” she tells Nick.

“Sure you do,” Nick says.

“Do I? Why do I then? Do you know why I bother?”

“Because she’s your green light too,” Nick says. “Like she is for Gatsby.” He shrugs. “She’s that kind of girl.”

Jordan feels bad. Nick is no one’s green light—the man he loves will never love him back, and even she only likes him in a casual way. She kisses him apologetically, and he doesn’t mind. The weather’s hot. Who cares who’s fucking who? But Jordan cares, though she doesn’t want to. And so does Tom Buchanan.

So the whole thing blows up in their faces, on poor Nick’s birthday, no less. A woman gets hit by a car. The driver may have been Daisy.

Jordan’s body is pumping adrenalin and elixir, and it would love to go flying somewhere else, somewhen else. Jordan pumps the brakes, though. She knows Daisy needs her here and now.

She goes to see her.

* * *

Daisy is crying.

Tom is up in his room, and Daisy is crying.

They are sitting in the parlor. Jordan was half afraid of this parlor when she first traveled here. She thinks she could still smell the salt water if she tried. But it is familiar to her now, the white furniture, the clean carpeting and wood-paneled floor. Sitting with Daisy here is familiar, though Daisy is not usually so sad. Jordan shushes her. “Hey, doll. Calm down. Just a little mess—it’ll be all right.”

“It was an accident,” Daisy says. “An accident.”

“Sure. No one knows it was you anyway. No one will know.” She kisses Daisy’s brow. “Of all the girls I know, you can get away with murder.”

Daisy blinks tearily. “It wasn’t murder. I didn’t mean to. I just didn’t swerve in time.”

“I’m not your judge, love. Don’t need your excuses.”

“I didn’t…”

As if Jordan gives a shit whether she meant to kill the woman or not. She thinks probably not. But she knows who it was, Tom’s mistress. She doesn’t care about this little pocket of domestic strife. It used to be a farce, and then it was amusing. Now as a tragedy it only tires her. In her time travels she has seen plenty of tragedy, plenty of death. She’d rather it never come here, back to New York with her. Certainly not back to Daisy’s doorstep.

Daisy ought to be kept safe from things like that. She was too pretty for something as ugly as death.

“I don’t think I can be with Jay anymore,” Daisy says quietly.

“That’s fine. You don’t need him.”

“I loved him very much.”

“Sure you did,” Jordan says comfortingly. “You always love people very much, Daisy.”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. You think I’m being childish. You always think I’m being childish.”

Jordan does, sometimes, see Daisy as something of a child. It’s an inevitable consequence of having seen her younger self so much. But she rubs Daisy’s shoulders. “I don’t. I think you’re sad.”

“All I have is Tom now. I don’t, I can’t…”

“Now that’s silly,” Jordan says firmly. “You know perfectly well you have more than Tom.”

Their eyes meet. Daisy’s watery, Jordan’s as still as glass. Daisy grabs her as she has so often before, brings her close. They kiss. Jordan tastes salt on Daisy’s lips.

“Jordan,” Daisy murmurs, “do you love me very much?”

“Very, very much.”

Then they hear someone banging at the door, yelling. Daisy buries her face in her hands. Jordan gets up and opens the door. It’s a man with graying hair and a wild look in his eyes.

There’s a gun in his hands.

“They said there was a woman driving the car,” he growls. “I’m guessing that’s you.”

Jordan steps back. She’s trying to figure out what to say when he raises the gun and shoots.

The pain peaks the adrenalin and elixir in her blood, and she goes flying before more than a few drops of it have fallen on the floor.

* * *

There is a girl in a little frilly dress. She is very young, and she is watching Jordan with wide eyes. “Mama! Mama, come here!”

“Daisy,” Jordan murmurs. The pain in her side is overwhelming. She presses her palm hard against the wound.

A child shouldn’t be seeing this.

Daisy shouldn’t be seeing her like this.

“Daisy, I’m sorry.”

“Let me help you,” the girl says. She stands close but doesn’t touch Jordan. She is too young and scared to know what to do.

“Daisy.”

“Do I know you?”

_Yes, you’ve known me. But this might be the end._

“I’m sorry,” Jordan says. It’s all she has left to say.

And then she’s off again.

* * *

She’s only half conscious when she arrives back in New York. She isn’t in the Buchanans’ house. She’s across the bay, standing in front of Gatsby’s luscious pool. Gatsby is swimming. She calls out to him—they’re friends, aren’t they?—“Jay!”

He surfaces from the water, sees her, and climbs out. “Miss Baker. What’s the matter with you? When did you get here?”

“I travel,” she reminds him faintly. Or did she ever tell him about that? She’s told many people. Most of the time they don’t believe her.

“You’re hurt.” He calls for his butler, demands a doctor be brought immediately. Jordan stumbles, but he catches her. The world is going dark. She wonders if she’s back at the right point in the timeline or not. She wonders if Daisy is safe, or if she got shot too.

* * *

She wakes up in a hospital. Daisy is there, sitting by the side of her bed, half-asleep. So that answers one question.

“Daisy.”

Daisy jolts awake. “Jordan!”

They stare at each other.

“I thought I had seen you for the last time,” Daisy says softly.

“No, you’ll never see the last of me,” Jordan says. “Fat chance.”

She squeezes Daisy’s hand. She’s too newly injured for a hug.

“The man was George Wilson,” Daisy says. “His wife was the one killed in the car crash. He wanted to kill me.” She shivers. “If I’d answered instead of you… But you vanished, and he was confused. Tom came down because he heard the shot. They fought. He-he shot Tom. Then he shot himself.” She shakes her head. “Tom’s dead.”

It’s a lot to process. “I’m sorry.”

“But that was all a year ago.”

“What?”

“You vanished for a year,” Daisy says. “I thought you were dead. Or gone forever.”

Jordan looks at Daisy more closely. There are perhaps some small signs of aging on her that were not there before. Her hair is shorter than before, actually—but the style is modest. She looks tired. “I’m surprised you stayed in the city.”

“I had to. Just in case you came back.” Daisy laughs. It does not tinkle as usual. “Then you went to Gatsby instead of me! How insensitive of you.”

“I can’t control my traveling.”

“Oh. About that.”

The doctor’s been by, and the old professor. They’ve examined her. What with the amount of blood she had to have transfused and some imbalance of her internal equilibrium, apparently the elixir in Jordan is mostly gone. She’s no time traveler anymore.

“Oh,” Jordan says.

It’s been so many years.

“That’s why you never came to see me older, when I was a kid,” Daisy says. “I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead now.” She squeezes Jordan’s hand again; it kind of hurts. “But you came back to me.”

“Of course I did,” Jordan says. “Didn’t I say it already? You’re never getting rid of me. I’m too much of a nuisance.”

She kisses Daisy. It’s a fortunate thing Daisy’s rich enough to have got her a private room in the hospital.

In fact, Daisy is quite rich now indeed. She’s inherited all Tom’s money and land, the big house and all their smaller houses around the country, all their properties. She tells Jordan they can retire to whichever one Jordan chooses, or even travel to each one in turn, or travel anywhere Jordan chooses, as long as they’re together. Because Jordan can be with her now, all the time.

“I’ll think it over,” Jordan says. She’s not sure she wants to stay in New York. She does want to stay somewhere. Growing roots has its appeal.

Though, Daisy is her real home. So wherever she goes with Daisy, she supposes it will be fine.


End file.
